


Twelve Minutes

by ValmureEld



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cuddling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fear, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Max Comes Back, Medical, Medical Trauma, Nightmares, PTSD, blood bag treatment, can be shippy or not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 18:02:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18393548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValmureEld/pseuds/ValmureEld
Summary: Furiosa comes across some information while sorting through the Organic Mechanic's morbid stores that shakes her. Max had risked far more, given her far more, than she'd ever realized.





	Twelve Minutes

**Author's Note:**

> So for a thing that was supposed to get written right before bed this really got away from me. Really only warning in this is for talk of blood. 
> 
> Parts are a little rough but I'm really tired and the words weren't quite coming to me like they usually do.

By the time Max finally came back to stay for more than a day, Furiosia had learned how to garden forty-three new kinds of plants, fix three new kinds of vehicles, and treat forty-six new kinds of injuries.

She hadn’t originally intended to become a medic and a gardener and the leader of this new era all in less than 130 days, but once she started learning new things it was hard to stop. Under Joe only the skills for each position mattered, and they were drilled and demanded until everything else fell away like the rust flaking from the war rig’s undercarriage. She’d almost forgotten how to do or be anything but an imperator, and while she could take apart and fix almost any engine in her sleep, she’d never learned much about how to heal.

Healing, in Joe’s world, was of no interest. Sapping life from other people so his war boys could go out in a blaze of worship was about all he cared for. It was less trouble on his blistered shoulders if the weak died and the strong butchered their way to fight for scraps at his feet.

Caring for people, learning to prevent death through more than a trickle of water and a fistful of seeds was something Furiosa found herself staying awake later and later to learn how to do. The girls she hadn’t been able to save, the vuvalini who’d died in her absence, even dozens of war boys sacrificed on Joe’s alter all kept flitting through her mind as she studied by lantern.

When she’d exhausted the materials and time of the few medics they did have, she took a breath and forged into the Organic Mechanic’s lair--a hole in the corner of his blood bag caves that they’d yet to purge. If she could have burned it all without risking an explosion or toxic wave of gas, she would have. The entire place still stank of death and vomit and blood, and it turned her stomach to think about how the mechanic had understood the human machine and chose to use that knowledge only to stoke Joe’s war engine.

If there was one thing the Organic had known, it was blood. She found notes and diagrams and scratched out experiments detailing the human cardiovascular system in horrible detail--horrible because the spots of blood still clung to the materials and she knew without much imagination that he’d scribbled these notes right next to his experiments. The sheer amount of information he’d compiled made her light headed, and the only thing that kept her going was a determination to put this knowledge to a kinder use.

He had everything. Blood types. Blood diseases. The best places to tap any available stock, missing limbs and grievous injuries notwithstanding. He’d taken the knowledge to an obsession beyond madness, knowing how to find and exploit any artery, every vein.

It was dark, depressing work, but thinking of all the people she could help with the knowledge kept her going. It wasn’t until the third night of pouring through the materials that something forced her to finally put it down and go to the green levels for some air.

She stood there, the night wind cool across her fevered shoulders, her flesh arm hugged tightly across her stomach.

_Twelve minutes._

She closed her eyes and her lips trembled as she pressed them together, breathing slowly through her nose even though her lungs shuddered.

It had been a simple piece of yellowed parchment with nothing but crude descriptions and minutes scratched in, along with a symbol that she’d found out matched with a diagram of tapping points for major arteries. The pattern was mechanical: a title for the blood bag indicating quality, a symbol for the needle’s location, and a minute denomination for when the heart had stopped beating and the body had ceased to be useful.

_Half life + 8_   
_Sick, mass damage. No good._   
_Starved * 7_   
_Tortured { 4_   
_Full life } 12_

Morbidly fascinated, wanting to put the sick log away but not quite able, she’d followed the symbols on the map, tracking where each person had been fatally tapped from. When she got to the “full life” designation, she blinked, the phrase showing in her mind suddenly not on leather, but on live skin.

Her fingers had started to tremble as she traced the symbol and dared look at the map. A lump formed in her throat.

_} Subclavian Artery._

She’d left immediately, not bothering to put out the lantern, hoping in some distant corner of her mind that something would catch for her carelessness and all of it would turn to ash.

Standing among the plants, a starry expanse reaching endlessly before her, she still couldn’t escape that terrible information.

Full life. That’s what had been tattooed so cruelly on Max’s back. Full life. Full of life, full of heat and bite and ferocity that still somehow never struck against her or the girls in any way that mattered. Max had been rabid, but only to preserve his own life. He had no interest in controlling theirs. Full life and immensely strong, even after being tortured and caged and tapped for his most precious resource. He’d been able to keep up with her after all, and she’d spent her entire life fighting.

She’d known from first looking at him that really, he had too.

She remembered where the needle had lain against his chest, where the bruising showed in the dip of his shoulder when she caught sight of it in a quiet moment later.

She remembered his rough hands so consciously gentle cradling her face while another needle invaded the artery in his arm. She’d felt his heart beating, then. Strangely, not in his chest, but in her own. Felt the blood he chose to give her, felt the measure of that strength that restored her own.

The girls had told her later, how readily he’d given that blood up. As a full life, Max was already in a minority, but as a universal donor he was part of a kind nearly extinct. His blood, his very life force was compatible with anyone who wanted to take it, but to find him help would take a miracle.

_Full life } 12_

Full of life he was so ready to lay down, and they’d stolen his blood at the risk of killing him so, _so_ quickly. In twelve minutes. If the Organic had had his way, if Nux hadn’t crashed the car and somehow saved both of them doing it, Max could have been _dead_ in twelve minutes.

Strong and kind and healthy and one of the only souls she’d met who still had a shred of empathy clinging to their bones and he could have been dead in twelve minutes for the crime of his blood.

She closed her eyes and swallowed down the bitterness of it, wishing he wasn’t out in the wasteland right that moment, wishing she could thank him for what he’d given her because what she’d said before now didn’t feel like near enough.

What if he’d died saving her? What if she’d woken up to faces of distant regret and mutterings of 'he didn’t make it.'

Why, when he surely must have been feeling the loss, had he given her his life without question?

The swarm of emotions nested in her head and trickled through her chest as an ache, and she rubbed at her forehead, trying to ease the tension.

She knew she needed to sleep, and wondered even as she turned from the terrace if she’d have anything but nightmares until Max came back again.

She needed to believe he _would_ come back again, and resolved to try and not carry his ghost around with her until he did.

Max did come back--24 days later. She’d stopped going through the Organic’s notes, needing the distance, needing the time in the gardens instead. But no matter how much dirt she scrubbed into her knuckles and how many seeds she planted, she couldn’t stop thinking about how close Max had come.

How close he’d willingly gone.

It was insanity of a private kind to need him back long enough that she could banish the thought that he _had_ died at the end of it. She’d seen him since. She knew he hadn’t bled out and stopped breathing--but the knowledge of what almost had been still chilled her and she felt nothing would bring her back but the heat of Max’s skin.

“Furi--Max is back!”

Even with the sunlight streaming in, Cheedo’s smile lit up the room and Furiosa felt her heart skip a beat as she scrambled up to follow her. Seeing him again was almost like seeing a ghost, but when Furiosa ignored all his caution and threw her body against his in a crushing hug, his heart beat too loudly and to strong for that.

“Hey...hey how are you?” he asked, patting at her and trying to tug away, obviously trying to look at her. She clung on despite his efforts, burying her face in his sweaty neck and relishing the feeling of his voice so close to her skull.

She wanted to thank him, and yet didn’t know how. Didn’t know how to bring up such a thing when she still didn’t understand what to do with what he’d done.

In the end, it came out because he cut himself.

“Ow, aw…” he hummed, in that almost croaky way when he was slightly disappointed. His brow furrowed as he looked at the blood trickling down his forearm.

They were working on the cars together, sharing pleasant conversation where she told him about the citadel’s progress and he grunted or asked for tools at intervals. They’d been relaxed, alone, nothing but grease and oil and rust to listen in. He’d been reaching in under one of the cars, trying to feel out a hose that needed re-patching, and he’d caught his skin on the sharp edge of the pipes.

It was obviously superficial, hardly needed cleaning and would probably clot on its own, but the sight of it sparked something deep in Furiosa and she panicked.

She fumbled for the nearest rag and grabbed at his wrist, pulling him towards her with a violence that startled both of them. “Don’t move, you have to be still Max, you can’t move..” 

She put a crushing pressure against the cloth, gripping so hard it caused Max’s eyes to widen and his shoulder to jerk. Not to get away, but to create more slack between them so she wasn’t torquing so hard on his joints. Something in her told her she was overreacting, but that part was not in charge.

“Furi--hey, Furiosa it’s fine, it was little….”

Max was trying to reason with her and she blinked, staring at him with eyes wide and shoulders tenser than steel. Her fingers were gripping hard enough to bruise, but the thought of letting go, of risking that blood dripping into the dust was paralyzing.

“No, you can’t, Max you _can’t_ ,” she stressed, pleading with him to understand even as she didn’t know what she was asking.

He can’t what? Die?

He would. Eventually.

“Okay,” he said, shaking his head and putting his hand gently over hers, even though she must be hurting him. “I won’t.”

His calm against her panic was like trying to get traction in a sand dune and she looked down at their hands, at the warm tone of his skin, at the veins threaded full and healthy between his tendons, blackened as they were by mechanic work.

All at once something broke open and she let him go, pulling back and leaving the crumpled rag against his skin.

“There, see?” Max said, turning away with a glance at her, careful to peel away the rag and check for himself before he shared. He held his arm up, and though there was still an angry cut, it was no longer streaming blood. It glistened wetly, but the clotting had obviously started.

Furiosia swallowed, slumping against the front tire as her body began to tremble with the adrenaline she hadn’t truly needed.

“Hey, you’re alright,” Max tried, shuffling closer and sitting next to her, not quite close enough to touch, but only a hair away all the same. “Yeah? Sorry I scared you.”

Her lips trembled and she drew her knees up, bowing her head as tears brimmed. She wanted to stop, but couldn't now that it had started.

“Why did you do it, Max?” she asked, her voice strained as she turned to look at him with red eyes. “Why did you give me your blood?”

He blinked, visibly taken off guard by the question. “I’m...universal. You needed it.” He shrugged, a slight furrow in his brow.

“And you didn’t?” she burst out, gesturing helplessly. “You’re a universal, which means anyone can take from you without danger. But what happens when you’re in trouble, Max? I can’t give the life back,” she said, gesturing to her own, useless veins.

He tilted his head, shaking it once as the troubled expression intensified. “I don’t want it back. I wanted you to have it, wanted you to live.”

“But you--”

He shook his head, gripping her wrist to stop her talking. “What’s happened?”

She swallowed, feeling the tears streak down to her jaw.

“Twelve minutes, Max,” she said finally, her voice breaking on his name. “I’ve been studying the Organic Mechanic’s notes--he killed a full life in twelve minutes by sticking a needle in his veins.” She reached out, pulling gently at Max’s shirt so she could touch the skin that was marked by the smallest scar. Beneath it, his pulse beat against the pad of her finger. “There.”

The furrow in his brow smoothed into pity, and Furiosa had to drop her hand and look away.

“He didn’t take all that much,” Max said, reaching up to brush away some of her tears with the rough pad of his thumb. “Hey? Furi, he didn’t have the chance. I’ve...lost blood before. I know what it feels like when it’s been too much and something happened. Maybe a kink in the line.” She felt him shrug, and she found the strength to look at him again.

“But you gave so much to me. Why……”

“Because I wanted to. Because you needed it. I can make more,” he said, a small quirk to his lips, and she actually had to choke on a laugh because he really didn’t try to joke normally. That reaction brightened his own expression and he gestured at himself. “I did make more. I heal fast.”

She shook her head, wiping away tears. “I just….don’t know how to repay you.”

“Don’t have to,” he said, leaning against the car and looking at her. “It was a gift.”

She sighed, feeling exhausted and daring to rest her head against his shoulder. He took it a step farther and put an arm around her, letting her shuffle to rest more against his chest instead. She heard the distant working of his heart beneath the soft filth of his shirt and she closed her eyes, turning her head to capture the sound.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about that number,” she admitted, after she’d counted out twelve heartbeats a dozen times over. “Ever since I found that paper…”

“I didn’t die,” he said, his voice vibrating through the warmth of his bones to curl up around his heart.

She rest her hand on his stomach, turning her shoulder a little more so she could lay her cheek against his sternum. His heart thumped against the curve of her brow like a kiss.

“No,” she said at last. “You didn’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> A friend and I were discussing Max's blood loss during fury road and she sent me this link:  
> https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/162232/how-much-blood-did-mad-max-lose-in-fury-road
> 
> Part of that link calculated that if Max had been drained at the rate you'd expect, he would have been dead in twelve minutes. From full life and strong to dead in twelve minutes was something I just couldn't shake thinking about.


End file.
